Thursday, January 24, 2013

History is closing in on the Jews of Yemen

We've seen many obituaries for the Jews of Yemen before - but this one in the Yemen Post seems to be the final word. The piece pulls no punches over the harsh treatment they have endured over the centuries under Muslim (Shi'a) rule. The final irony is that these Jews, who predate Islam by millennia, are now refugees in their own country (the NGO Sawa'a is asking for UNHCR to recognise them as internally displaced). My own view is that the remnant will be airlifted to Israel, although I take with a pinch of salt reports that a group of Jews has already been flown in via Qatar. (With thanks: Eliyahu, Lily)

In the 19th Century, under the rule of the Imams, the Jews of Yemen became
social pariahs, being forced to follow harsh and often humiliating
rules -- they were forbidden from wearing new or flamboyant clothes,
compelled to walk long distances on foot as riding donkey and mules were
reserved for Muslims; they were also prohibited from engaging in money
transactions.
Reports estimated the Yemeni Jewish community to be standing at
30,000 with 200 in Aden - southern seaport - 10,000 in Sana'a, 1,000 in
Sa'ada, 1,000 in Dhamar and 2,000 in the desert of Beydha.

A series of mass migration to the Jewish of Israel left only a
handful of Jews in Yemen northern highlands, the only remnants of a long
exhausted line of Israelite migrants, who once upon a time sought
refuge in the land of Queen Sheba.

Yemen 2011 Revolution left the Jewish community ever more so
vulnerable as sectarian tensions started to flare up again in Yemen,
awaken by the Houthis' claims over provinces lying north of Sana'a and
Sunni extremists clamoring for a return to Sharia law.

With most of the remaining Jews of Yemen now living in a guarded
compound in Sana'a, the dwindling community has said to be living a
nightmare, with the walls of history literally closing down on them.

Descent into Oblivion: Following a violent and bloody pogrom against the Jewish community in Aden, where 82 Jews were killed by rioters in 1947 and hundreds of home
pillage, thousands of members of the community decided to immigrate to
Israel. Between June 1949 and September 1950 some 50,000 Jews were
shipped off the newly born Jewish State in the so-called Magic Carpet.
Until 1962 the exodus continued.
With only a few pockets left here and there in Yemen's highlands, the
Jews of Yemen faded in the shadows, ignored by the central government
and sought extinct by the international community.

The murder in 2008 of Rabbi Moshe Yaish Nahara'i by the hand of
radical Islamist prompted then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh to relocate
the Jewish communities of Amran and Raidah to the capital, Sana'a, where
he felt they would be safer. The issuance of a presidential decree saw
the allocation of plots of land to some 50 Jewish families.
In 2009, heightened tensions with al-Qaeda led the United Jewish
Communities, the U.S State Department, local federations, and the Hebrew
Immigrant Aid Society to work together to implement the evacuation of
close to half of the remaining Jewish population in Yemen.

The remnants were moved to a compound -70 Jews from northern Yemen - as
the state openly admitted it could (not) ensure the community safety anywhere
else.
As Yemen was defiantly moving toward democracy following a three
decades' long dictatorial presidency under the yoke of Ali Abdullah
Saleh, the Jews of Yemen sought political recognition by demanding to be
allocated seats in Parliament. Yemen Chief Rabbi Yehia Yussef Mussa
told CNN Arabic back in May 21st, 2012, "I demand the government's new
attention to this, to work to allocate seats for members of the
community in the Consultative Council and Parliament, in order to feel
real citizenship, non-discrimination, a right guaranteed by our law and
the Constitution."

Mussa emphasized at the time his community was keen
to serve Yemen to the best of its abilities as any other citizens would.

On May 22sd, 2012, Aaron Yusef Zindani was stabbed to death outside
the U.S Embassy in Sana'a. Having been accused by a neighbor of
witchcraft, Aaron received multiple wounds to its chest,back neck, head
and stomach, which he was unable to recover from.
The attack which was not per se sectarian motivated, however raise
fear among the Jewish community that Yemen was no longer a place it
could call home.

The Last Straw: Yemeni-based Sawa'a Organization for Anti-Discrimination revealed on
Saturday, January 19th, 2013 that the President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi
government had decided to suspend its funding for "the remaining 100-odd
members of the country's ancient and internally displaced Jewish
community."

Sawa'a expressed deep sorrow at the news, stressing that without housing
benefits and access to basic services the community had been left
stranded, without any mean to support itself.
The organization is now arguing the Jews of Yemen fall under the
UNHCR in their capacity of IDPs, and therefore should receive "housing
and safe living."

Having been excluded from Yemen National Dialogue, Parliament and now
mainstream society, the Jews of Yemen have very few options left; a
return to the province of Sa'ada from which they forced out in 2008 or
exile to Israel, where many before them found comfort in the knowledge
they were amid their kins.

As Yemen enters its post-revolution era the pages of history are resolutely closing on the Jews of Yemen.

2 comments:

I believe strongly that the Yemeni Jews whom were murdered by Muslim-fanatical Jew-hating pieces of slimeshould be avenged. those whom are responsible for killing the defenseless Jews for no other reason than they were Jews, also the young Jewish girls abducted from their families to be forcibly converted to Islam in order to marry dirty old men should all be found and have their balls cut off.

I believe strongly that the Yemeni Jews murdered by fanatical Muslim Jew-hating slime should be avenged. Those who are responsible for killing in cold blood the defenseless Jews for no reason other that they were Jews,also the young Jewish girls whom were forcibly abducted from their family and coerced under the penalty of death to convert to Islam in order to marry dirty old men should now all be sought out and have their balls cut off.

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)